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Legal Aid Services Council (No 2) Bill
Following is a speech by the Chief Secretary, the Hon Mrs Anson Chan in resuming the second reading debate of the Legal Aid Services Council (No 2) Bill in the Legislative Council today (Wednesday):
Mr President,
On October 18, 1995, the Legal Aid Services Council (No 2) Bill was introduced into this Council. This Bill provides for the establishment of an independent Legal Aid Services Council to oversee the publicly-funded legal services operated by the Legal Aid Department and the Duty Lawyer Service. The objective of the Bill is to provide greater and more direct public participation in legal aid administration and policy formulation and to enhance the independence of legal aid administration.
I would like first to thank Members of the Bills Committee, especially its Chairman, the Honourable Mrs Miriam Lau, for their hard work and thorough examination of this controversial Bill. We have responded positively to most of the ideas put forward by Members of the Bills Committee and these are reflected in the Committee Stage Amendments which I will move later.
Before I proceed any further, Mr President, I should like to acknowledge that I appreciate that for some members, this Bill does not go any far enough. And in the views of members, nothing short of a totally independent legal aid services will be acceptable. Let me just recapitulate briefly why we do not agree with setting up an independent legal aid authority now. The first reason is that we are frankly not convinced that this is the best way forward. The second reason is that it will take a considerable period of time to do this. It will be necessary to dis-establish the Legal Aid Department and draw up new terms and conditions of services for the new authority. From experience, this could involve protracted consultation with the staff of the department. We have now indicated clear support for the proposal. Therefore, we have proposed proceed in two stages: first by establishing the Legal Aid Services Council and secondly by asking the Legal Aid Services Council to examine and advise on the proposal for an independent authority.
Mr President, I would like to outline briefly our proposed changes to the Bill and to set out our views on some of the concerns raised by the Bills Committee.